Light Sail

[Richard Wallace]

Has anyone seen more about this?

Looks like a cool project.

[David Brinza]

I'm a long-time member of the Planetary Society and recall an earlier attempt to launch a solar sail spacecraft called "Cosmos 1". The spacecraft was built in Russia with support from the members of the Planetary Society. Unfortunately, the submarine-launched rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed to achieve orbit back in 2005. The LightSail mission is the next attempt by the Planetary Society to demonstrate a solar sail spacecraft.

NASA has also done developmental work on solar sails under its In-Space Propulsion Technology program at Marshall Space Flight Center (Alabama). A deployment test was performed in 2005m using the very large vacuum test facility operated by NASA Glenn Research Center in Plum Brook Station, Ohio.

Solar sail spacecraft have been studied for use in interplanetary missions as far back as the 1970's. While at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Louis Freeman (now president of the Planetary Society) led a project to use a solar sail propelled spacecraft to study Halley's comet in the 1986 flyby. The project was canceled, though the conclusion was reached that solar sails are a viable means of in-space propulsion.

[dlavery]

This is actually the second attempt that the Planetary Society has made to launch an solar sail experiment. They tried earlier in 2005, but the Volna launch failed and the payload ended up in the Barents Sea. The current LightSail-1 payload is a continuation of the NASA "NanoSail" project, which was cut from the NASA In-Space Propulsion research program after the loss of the first flight experiment when the SpaceX Falcon-1 launch failed. At the time that it was cut, the Planetary Society, which has had a long-term interest in alternative propulsion technologies, offered to continue the project with private funding.

-dave

/edit/ (and Dave posted a lot of this already while I was looking for the NanoSail link)

-.

[IKE]

I built one of these in the early 90's for a rocketry competition:
http://www.oldrocketplans.com/estes/est2044/est2044.htm
http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/cat...2/92est40.html

The rocket was inspired by the historical works mentioned above. It had a beautiful silver parachute and was a really neat kit.

[JohnBoucher]

I followed Dave's link and learned some new.

You can follow these missions via twitter. It should not of surprised me, NASA 's up on all that stuff.

Here is the link to the rovers http://twitter.com/MarsRovers

[EOC]

There is a great sci-fi book written by Larry Nevin, "The Mote in God's Eye", which involves interstellar travel using a light sail. In the book they used planet based lasers to propel the sail.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

A month or two ago, the National Geographic had a small article that referenced the folding of the sail before deployment to an origami technique. It was reported that the geometric folding would prevent fouling the sail during deployment.